Sarah Porter, Head of Innovation, JISC - presentation at Educause 2010

1. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 1
Collaboration in a Competitive Environment:
Sustaining Success through Shared Services
Sarah Porter, Head of Innovation, JISC
Joint Information Systems Committee Supporting education and research

2. Joint Information Systems Committee
The UK Higher Education Sector
 165 higher education institutions in the UK
 450 colleges of further education
 Average annual turnover of individual
universities is £100 million
 About 2 million full time students (1 in 7 from
overseas)
 Overseas’ student fees income: £1.3 billion
 England the favourite destination of
international students after the US university
system
 UK HE sector a substantial industry (£45.1bn
total output 2003/04)
 Income (earned revenue) of UK HEIs is
£16.87 billion (2003/04)
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3. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 3
Context: why do we need the JISC in UK education?
 Changing student expectations: the student as
‘customer’ and the need to support diverse learners
e.g. work-based, international and part-time
 The need for more visionary and innovative use of ICT
in institutional management and administration
 The need for best practice in supporting and managing
research in order to retain excellence
 Increased global competition in higher education
 Changes in the economic environment
 Need to balance increased competition between
institutions
 With the value that is brought by collaboration in the
right areas
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4. Joint Information Systems Committee
Funding and governance
Funding:
 Funded by all the public funding organisations that pay for tertiary
education in the UK
 Seven major funders – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales
 Additional income from charges for particular services
Governance:
 Governed by representatives from the education sector not by
government
 Board and sub-committees made up of representatives who decide what
activities should be funded three times per year
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5. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 5
JISC budget 2010-11
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6. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 6
JISC Strategy 2010-2012: four priority investment areas
 Cost-effective shared
infrastructure and resources
 Efficient and effective
institutions
 Effective, creative approaches
to teaching and an enhanced
learning experience
 Increased research quality,
impact and productivity, and
innovative approaches to
supporting the research
process
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7. Joint Information Systems Committee
JISC: a shared service
 Aim: to provide services and resources that individual institutions
cannot provide as efficiently or effectively
 JANET: essential infrastructure
for research and education
 JISC Access Management Federation
 JISC Collections: for every £1 funding,
the community received services with
a commercial value of over £34
 JISC Advance: its services save the sector
around £12 for every £1 invested
in them
 Other specialist services provided such as
National Grid Service
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8. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 8
Delivery: services
JISC funds a portfolio of 49 services giving
institutions access to :
 Underpinning infrastructure via
– JANET(UK) (computing network)
– Access Management Federation
 Online resources
– Learning resources
– Primary and secondary
materials e.g. PubMedCentral
– All media formats
Advice and support via
– JISC Advance (advisory services)

9. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 9
Education and research network: JANET
Established in 1984 (26 years old!)
Provides reliable, high quality, high speed
network connection to over 18 million users from
higher ed, further ed (community colleges),
research institutes and all publically funded K-12
schools
Also provides connectivity to other sections of
the public sector
Other services
include video-
conferencing,
Eduroam, web-
hosting and training.

10. Joint Information Systems Committee
Funding
 Block grant of about £40m per
year from JISC
 Additional one-off funding from
JISC for significant upgrades
 Tiered Annual Tariff for higher
education institutions based
on their annual income
 Access by colleges and
schools funded by income
from other central funding
bodies
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11. Joint Information Systems Committee 11

12. Joint Information Systems Committee 12
The UK access management federation
 Launched November 2006
 Replaced system that had been in
place since mid 1990s
 Used by all UK research institutes and
public education at all levels (K12,
community colleges and higher
education)
 Shibboleth based system
 Discovery Service
 Resilient WAYF service
 Hosting of metadata
 Monitoring of Service Providers and
Identity Providers

13. Joint Information Systems Committee
Funding and governance
 Organisational structure
 Federation ‘owned’ by JISC and
Becta
 Policy & Governance Board
 Technical Advisory Group
 Funding
– Funded entirely by JISC and
Becta at present
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14. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 14
http://www.jisc-content.ac.uk/

15. Joint Information Systems Committee 30 January 2015 | | Slide 15
 Not-for-profit membership organisation
spun out from the JISC several years
ago
 Negotiates reasonable licence costs for
access to digital resources
 Tiered charging approach
 Some resources provided free to
education in perpetuity after bulk
purchase
 Delivered over £25 million in efficiency
gains in 2008/09
 Most collections heavily used. E.g.
Over 2 million articles were
downloaded from the Oxford Journals
Archive in 2008/09.


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17. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 17

18. Joint Information Systems Committee
Images and other media from a range of organisations
 British Film Institute - InView (Authentication
required - free for all FE and HE)
https://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/theme/health
 Over a thousand hours of non-fiction films from
the BFI archives
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British Cartoon Archive
http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/
150,000 cartoons

19. Joint Information Systems Committee
Community content: repositories for learning, teaching and
research
 Medical image repository at Middlesex university:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/inf11/su
e2/mirage.aspx
 biophysical repository at King’s College London
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/inf11/di
gpres/bril.aspx
 A Google maps type interface for exploring and
annotating embryo images:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/inf11/su
e2/nextgenerationembryology.aspx
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An information environment for
neuroscientists – collaboration between
Oxford, Reading and Southampton
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programme
s/inf11/einf/neurohub.aspx

20. Joint Information Systems Committee
Community content: Open Educational Resources
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21. Joint Information Systems Committee 30/01/15 | Supporting education and research | Slide 21
Effective Practice series (www.jisc.ac.uk/publications)
 Effective Assessment in a Digital Age
 Effective Practice in a Digital Age
 Effective Practice with e-Portfolios
 In Their Own Words – Exploring the
learners’ perspective on e-learning
 Designing Spaces for Effective Learning
 Innovative Practice with e-Learning

22. Joint Information Systems Committee
Development of Future Services
 UK Cloud for Higher Education
– Focused upon research community in
its first phase
– Challenging timescales for delivery
 Software and application services in
the Cloud
– Working with commercial sector to
work towards cloud-based hosting for
major administrative services used by
colleges and universities
– Not clear what areas should be
targeted
– Shared procurement services or
central hosting – or both?
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23. Joint Information Systems Committee
Other perspectives on Shared Services and Cloud Computing
Walter van Dijk, SURF NET, Dutch
approach to Shared Services and Cloud
Jacob-Steen Madsen, WAYF, Danish
approach to Shared Services and Cloud
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24. Joint Information Systems Committee
Key issue 1: business models
 Business model based upon central funding from government may be
challenged
– Also, not enough funding to provide all desired services (‘gap between
aspiration and resource’)
 Option: Pass all costs on to institutions?
 Risks:
– may lead to break up of the organisation
– May lead to ‘lowest common denominator’ instead of broad portfolio of
innovative services
 Option: collaborate with commercial sector or other bodies
 Risks
– May lose ability to respond to needs of public sector
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25. Joint Information Systems Committee
Key issue 2: governance
 Option to provide differentiated offer
– Core set of services for all
– ‘opt in’ services in some cases
 Risks:
– Need to retain balance in favour of core services for all
– Where value is considered for the consortium as a whole, not for each
individual organisation
– May lose bargaining power if fragmentation is allowed to start
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26. Joint Information Systems Committee
Key issue 3: sustaining innovation
 All services have developed from experimental, innovative funding
 After innovation has proved its value, becomes part of the JISC Service
Portfolio
– JANET, Access Management Federation, JISC Collections, data centres ...
 Need to sustain development of new services
 Whilst maintaining reliable portfolio with long-term commitment
 Models that allow innovation ‘bottom up’ rather than trying to anticipate
requirements centrally
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27. Joint Information Systems Committee
Potential future Shared Service: eBioLabs
 eBioLabs, Dept of Biochemistry,
University of Bristol
 Focused upon laboratory based
modules in the biosciences
 developed preparatory materials
online which learners have to
engage with pre-lab,
 Learners are better prepared for
the face to face lab session.
 Learners are assessed online -
with support for marking which
has made the process more
efficient.
 More info at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/pr
ogrammes/elearning/curriculumde
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28. Joint Information Systems Committee
Potential future Shared Service: dynamic learning maps
 Dynamic Learning Maps, School of Medical
Sciences, Newcastle University
 Viewing the ‘curriculum’ using a fusion of
curriculum maps, learner content with elements
of web 2.0 and semantic web approaches;
 Enable learners and tutors to see an alternative
map of the curriculum, either in nodes or list
form;
 Helps to map the relationships between
modules, and links through the learners
portfolios - so enabling more sense to be made
of the curricula as a whole. More info at:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/ele
arning/curriculumdelivery/dynamiclearningmaps.
aspx
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29. Joint Information Systems Committee
Contact details
 Sarah Porter, s.porter@jisc.ac.uk
 Tel. +44 203 006 6060
 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
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